A Catalog of Non-Definitive Acts
by nwtly
Summary: Post 4x09. Elena hates the sire bond. Damon can't stay away from Elena. First, Elena makes a confession. Then, Damon makes a sacrifice. It all ends in truth and chaos. (Three-Parter.)
1. Part 1: Elena

**A Catalog of Non-Definitive Acts**

**Spoilers:** Part 1 of this story is set after episode 4x09 "O Come, All Ye Faithful". Parts 2 and 3 will include pure speculation based on casting releases and pictures tweeted by the cast for episodes 4x13/4x14.

**Summary:** Elena hates the sire bond. Damon can't stay away from Elena. First, Elena makes a confession. Then, Damon makes a sacrifice. It all ends in truth and chaos.

**Author's note:** This started as a one-shot Christmas fluff piece. Somehow, it became a 10,000 word beast. I've never needed two characters to be okay more than Damon and Elena. This is my attempt at dealing with the sire bond, coming to you in three parts.

**PS:** I borrowed the title and chapter headings of this fic from Richard Siken's incredible poem "_Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_."

PART 1

Elena

"_You want a better story. Who wouldn't?"_

Elena Gilbert hated the sire bond.

She kicked the punching bag in front of her with all the hatred she felt for the universe's latest attempt at stripping away her agency.

Elena Gilbert was a doppelganger. Elena Gilbert's death activated a sacrifice. Elena Gilbert's blood turned werewolves into hybrids. Elena Gilbert's life was tied to a vampire hunter.

Well, Elena Gilbert was her own person, thank you very much.

The punching bag flew off its chain and landed all the way across Ric's apartment, sending a lamp crashing on the floor.

She almost felt guilty for destroying Alaric's furniture (that was one of her new vampire habits), and then she remembered how absurd her guilt was. It wasn't like Alaric was around to miss any of it.

She grabbed her things and headed out the door. She didn't need to be thinking about her dead history teacher/legal guardian/parental figure any more today.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she crossed the town square. She hoped for Jeremy or Damon's name to appear on the screen, but since when did she get what she wanted?

"Hey Bonnie."

"Merry Christmas Elena!"

She tried to muster some holiday cheer. "Merry Christmas to you too."

"So how's it going? Is Caroline playing nice?"

"She's… fine." Elena winced.

She couldn't remember needing her friends more than she did now, when she was forced to doubt her own thoughts her feelings. The problem was, Caroline disapproved of _everything_ Elena thought or did, and she hadn't been shy about letting Elena know.

So when Caroline had admitted to inviting Stefan over for Christmas, Elena had made up a lie about going with Bonnie. The last thing she needed was Stefan watching her every move like it could bring the girl he fell in love with back to life. (He couldn't, and no cure or broken sire bond ever would.)

So Elena was spending Christmas alone. Which was just as well. She was in no mood to celebrate.

"Good," Bonnie answered. "You deserve a nice Christmas after everything that's happened."

"You too, Bonnie."

"I'm sorry I can't help with the sire bond. If there was anything I could do to break it, you know I would."

Elena's throat tightened at Bonnie's words. She didn't deserve her kindness after everything she had put her through. "Thank you. Hey Bonnie, I gotta go - Caroline needs help in the kitchen."

"No problem. I should probably get back to the family too. Tell Care I said Merry Christmas okay?"

"Will do." Elena paused. "I miss you."

"Miss you too!"

The line went dead just as Elena reached her house.

She dragged her feet. She was dying to hear her brother's voice, but she wanted to respect the distance Jeremy had established between them. They had texted earlier, and apparently this was all the family sibling interaction she would get today.

She used to love Christmas. She would bake gingerbread houses with her mom, craft handmade decorations, and stuff her family's stockings with carefully picked out presents. But that was before everyone she cared about had died.

Everything had gone to hell since.

Elena slid the key in her front door and entered her house. She leaned against the door and squeezed her eyes shut. She dreaded the deafening lack of living family members.

The scent of cinnamon filled her nostrils, and she froze. (For a second, she was human again and her mom was still alive and she wasn't an undead monster who drank blood to stay alive.) Her eyes flew open.

She stepped away from the door and took a few steps towards the living room.

Across from her stood a giant Christmas tree crouching under the weight of decorations and string lights. The fireplace was lit. There were stocking on the mantle.

Elena slowly turned towards the kitchen.

Her eyes locked with Damon's, and he smiled at her. She crashed in his arms the next second.

"Hey," he whispered into her hair.

Her lips curved into a smile. "Hey back."

She reveled in this moment for a minute. And then she remembered what the last two weeks had been like without so much as a phone call from him.

She pulled back, and shoved him as hard as she could with her hands. He stumbled all the way back to the fridge.

"What is that for?"

"That's for not picking up my calls for two weeks and then showing up at my house on Christmas day and turning my living room into winter wonderland."

Damon glanced at the tree. "I don't know, I think Martha Stewart would be pretty proud."

"Damon."

"Elena."

Elena crossed her arms, glaring at him with what she hoped was blazing fury. "I'm serious."

Damon dropped the goofy smile. (She wanted it back.) "I'm sorry, okay?" he began. "I didn't exactly plan this. I thought about you being alone at Christmas and I just got in my car and drove."

"I told Jeremy I would be at Caroline's."

"You didn't want your brother to worry, I get it. But it didn't take a genius to figure out you weren't going to be hanging out with Little Miss Perfect Vampire."

She wanted to stay mad at Damon for a hell of a lot longer than a minute. She really did. The last two weeks had been miserable without so much as one conversation with him. But her anger faded at the guilt she saw etched on every line of his face.

"You didn't give me a choice when you sent me away," she started. She felt so tired all of a sudden. "You could have picked up your phone at least once. And your cryptic texts don't count."

"I thought it would be easier if we just didn't talk."

"You were wrong."

"Newsflash: everyone else in town already thinks I'm always wrong."

Elena moved closer to Damon again. He looked… tired, too. "Just because you sent me away doesn't mean I don't miss you."

"I think your brother's doing well," he said, redirecting their conversation into safe territory. (Nothing was ever safe with them.)

She played along. For now. "Thank you for taking care of him."

"Well, it's not like we've been bonding or anything," Damon quipped. "But," he continued, "it turns out, Matt's not so useless after all."

"Are you sure you don't want to be spending Christmas with them instead?" she asked him playfully. "Pass around the bourbon, share girl stories by the fireplace?"

Damon rolled his eyes. Elena laughed. She saw his eyes cloud with what she suspected to be halfway between love and lust, and her stomach clenched.

Damon walked over to the kitchen island. "I made eggnog."

She eyed the mugs. "I haven't had anything but blood and alcohol since I…" she paused. She never knew which word to choose. "… turned."

"I figured. I slipped a little whiskey in. Your body's adjusted by now. This might be a good—" He stopped halfway through his sentence. Blood drained from his face.

"What?"

"Forget it."

She tried to reach for him. He stepped away. "Damon."

Everything about him reeked with anger. "I can't even ask you if you want to have some fucking eggnog without worrying about forcing you to agree to whatever I want."

She sped over to him and placed her hands on either side of his face. She felt him flinch under her touch. "Damon, look at me. We can get through this, okay?"

"No, we can't." His eyes shone with pain. "Every second I'm around you is just one more moment you'll regret when we find a way to break the bond."

"Is that really what you think?"

"It's the only thing that makes sense."

"Damon," she whispered. She meant it not just as a plea, but as a declaration, a certainty, a truth she had fought for so long.

She reached for his hand. He let her. She led them to the couch.

"You need to know… that night I went off the bridge, and you asked me to choose—"

"Elena—"

"No, let me finish, please. This isn't about the sire bond. This is about _me_. Human me." It was almost too difficult to look at him while saying this. But she didn't think she'd ever needed to say anything as much as she needed to say this. "You asked me to choose, and I picked Stefan. And I don't regret it. He was—being in love with him helped me live again after my parents died. I didn't want to lose that love. I wanted to know that some things didn't have to end. I wanted to be the girl who fell in love and stayed in love and didn't fall for her boyfriend's brother."

Damon's eyes shot up. She went on. "Damon, I was already in love with you when Matt's truck went off the bridge. I didn't want to be, but I was. And I thought I could fight my feelings for you and do the right thing with Stefan. And maybe if I hadn't died and become a vampire, maybe I would have been able to stick to that."

"And that's what you should have done. That's what you really want."

She shook her head. Damon was always so willing to send her straight back into his brother's arms that it terrified her. He didn't seem to believe anyone could genuinely love him, let alone her. And maybe she'd played a part in that. But she wanted it to change. She _needed_ it to change.

"Do you know what I thought of when the water filled my lungs that night? I watched Stefan take Matt away, and then it was just me in the water… and I was ready to die. I wanted to be with my parents again. I wanted to see Jenna again. I felt like it was okay. Like I'd lived enough. I'd loved and been with my friends and I was dying to save someone's life. I was ready to go. But then I thought of you. I thought of you dying from the werewolf bite and how I would have given anything to save you. I thought of the way I felt when we kissed in Denver and how I never got to tell you how alive you made me feel. And I thought that I was going to die without getting to be with you because I was too scared to give this a chance. It made me want to live. And then your blood kept me alive. And until yousent us both into the water to save me from burning up at Wickery bridge, every moment of being a vampire was just me trying to forget those seconds where you were the only thing I wanted. And I know you think that I only want to be with you because of the sire bond, but the way I feel about wanting to be with you now – it's just those few seconds all over again. It's me being brave instead of trying to do what's right by Stefan and by everyone else."

His eyes roamed all over her face. "You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now."

She bit her lower lip. He clearly underestimated how much she wanted him back. "So do it."

He ignored her command. "You saved my life that night, you know. Ric – Alaric – he was about to kill me. And when you died, he died… and I lived." He dropped his hand from her face. "And my blood turned you into the one thing you didn't want to be."

"But I still got to live. And I'm glad." It had taken her so long to get to that point. If she was honest with herself, she liked herself more now than she had ever since her parents died. "So what if one day we do find this cure and it works? I want to be here now. I'm not going to feel sorry about it."

"You're not going to make this easy, are you?"

She shook her head. "I've been thinking a lot about everything I've done since I turned. And the things I did that didn't feel like me. When you told me to leave the lake house – that was the first time I could feel my body fight with my brain because you were making me do something I didn't want to do. But all the other times, even when you told me to kill Connor – deep down, I wanted those things. It didn't feel like you were forcing me into them."

"That's the point, Elena. You can't tell the difference."

"Yes, I can. When Bonnie drove me home two weeks ago, I was going crazy because I wanted to stay with you but I couldn't. That's not how it felt any of the other times. And it's not like I haven't been able to fight you on any of your decisions before. Whenever you changed your mind and let me do what I wanted – then it was what_ I_ wanted."

"That doesn't make it right."

"I know. And believe me, there's nothing I want more than to be free of this. I'm tired of everyone treating me like I can't think for myself. And I'm terrified of this power you have over me. The idea that the bond really could be making me things I don't actually feel…" She trailed off.

She'd struggled with herself a lot over the last two weeks. She'd picked apart every thought she'd had about Damon since turned, and compared it to everything she felt for him before turning. But nothing felt foreign to her. He was still Damon and she was still Elena. And she refused to believe any of her romantic feelings were a result of the sire bond. Otherwise it was like saying all the things she'd felt as a human were not real. And they were.

"I hate this sire bond. I really do. I'm not just sitting here thinking it's the best thing that happened to me. But I know how I felt before I turned. And I trust you, Damon. I know you would never take advantage of it."

"I'm doing just that by being here with you."

"No, you're not." She paused. There were more truths he needed to hear. "So maybe the sire bond is taking away some of my guilt about Stefan. And maybe I wouldn't have let myself be with you this soon without feeling bad about it. But I'm not going to sit here and regret anything that's happened between us. Because it would have all happened eventually."

He titled his head. "Do you really believe that?"

She nodded. She could see Damon's mind reeling, looking for more reasons to push her away. She jumped in before he could find them. "I have an idea," she told him.

He raised an eyebrow. "Why do I feel like I'm not going to like this?"

"We've both been going crazy trying to figure out how to act around each other. So I want to try something. You tell me specifically not to do something I know I want, and I'll see how I feel about it. And then you can tell me to ignore what you said. So I can see how it feels. And if I can fight it."

"No, Elena—"

"I_ need_ to try this, okay? I need to feel like I have some control over what's happening to me. Please."

He sighed. "You know, if it weren't for the hell I put you through when you could only drink blood from the vein and then when I sent you to kill Connor, I would seriously doubt you're sired to me at all."

She laughed. He kept his eyes focused on her. "Just once," he conceded eventually. "And it better be something really stupid."

She grimaced. He really wasn't going to like this. "Tell me not to kiss you."

"What? Elena, no—"

"You promised."

"This is ridiculous. You're ridiculous."

"Damon."

"You want me to tell you what to do with your body and—"

"How is it any different from sending me away from the lake house?"

He knew she was right. She gave him her best smile, knowing full well it would work in her favor.

"You're pretty devious, you know that?"

She shrugged. (She loved that he knew every part of her, light or dark.) "So you'll do it?"

He spat the words like they were poison. "Elena, I want you _not_ to kiss me."

It took a few seconds for the words to take effect, but she could feel her body separate from her mind.

She wasn't supposed to kiss him. He had asked not to, so she wouldn't. She wanted to do what_ he_ wanted.

She tried to remember how she felt before he had given his order. She wanted to, uh … (press her li-) oh, she wasn't sure. What she wanted didn't matter anyway. (Didn't it?)

"Elena?"

She watched Damon. He looked so pained. So… human. Like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. She wanted to see him smile like he had on the morning they had woken up together.

She remembered the way his lips had felt when she had pulled him to her then. She remembered thinking that all the chaos and destruction was worth living through just so she could have this moment with Damon, with him smiling into their kiss and the sounds he made when she kissed his chest and the way her skin caught on fire wherever he touched her.

Elena paused. She wasn't supposed to kiss him. (But she wanted to.) She closed her eyes and thought of all the times her eyes had stared at his lips of their volition when she wasn't supposed to (when he was heartless and when she was in love with his brother and every single time she pretended nothing was going on between them.) She opened her eyes again.

Did she want to kiss him now? No. (Yes.)

He had told her not to. Why would she even think about it? Her heart picked up in her chest. She felt like she was on the verge of something big but she couldn't figure out _what_.

She tried to focus on a memory. A shabby motel on the outskirts of Denver. She'd learned about what Damon had done for Rose and it had felt like she was coming apart at the seams. The world wasn't black and white like she wanted it to be. She loved Stefan, but she couldn't even begin to put words to her feelings for Damon. (She was in love with him. There.)

She had lied in bed next to him and it had felt like her heart was going to burst in her chest. The problem wasn't that she _wanted_ Damon (God, she did), but that she wanted every part of him. She wanted everything with him.

She had kissed him then because she was so damn tired of fighting what she wanted.

Damon came into focus again, sitting across from her on the couch.

She _loved_ him_._

(The good and the bad too.)

She was in love with him.

(Yes, yes, _yes_.)

She wanted to touch him.

(Everywhere.)

She wanted to kiss him.

(So what if he had told her not to? Since when did she do what Damon wanted?)

She wanted to kiss him, so she was going to kiss him.

(It was that simple.)

Her lips curved into a smile and she leaned over. She saw his eyes widen, and then she pressed her lips to his. (Finally.)

Damon kissed her back. His blue eyes were alive with shock and amazement. "How did you…" he trailed.

"I'm not sure," she answered. "I thought about you'd told me to do, and how I felt about it, and then I could just do it –"

He jumped in. "This doesn't mean the bond is broken—"

"I know."

"What you feel could still be—"

It was her turn to roll her eyes. "Damon. Shut up."

"This isn't right—" he started. She brought her thumb to his lips, parting them slightly. He stopped talking.

Then he pulled her to him, right or wrong be damned, and she came alive with his lips pressed to hers, his body flush with hers, and the glorious knowledge that she would never, ever get enough of him, of this, of them.

Elena was having this moment, and the sire bond could go to hell.


	2. Part 2: Damon

PART 2

Damon

"_Forget the dragon, leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness."_

Elena Gilbert was evil.

Okay, maybe Damon was stretching the truth a little. He had started liking Elena all on his own. She'd been madly in love with his brother, which should have been an instant turn off. Except Elena was all fire underneath that content pretty girl facade she put up for everyone, and Damon had never been able to look away. Fuck, he'd tried.

So, yeah, Damon Salvatore was whipped. The real blow to his eternal stud ego was that he actually _liked_ it.

Being in love with Elena was nothing like his puppy Katherine love. He had spent 145 years pining for Katherine when she had never really loved him, let alone known him. But Damon didn't idolize Elena the way he had Katherine. He knew exactly who she was. (She was a pain in the ass.)

The crazy part was, Elena had seen the worst of him, and she loved him all the same.

No, wait. She_ liked_ him all the same. The _sire bond_ made her love him.

Damon drowned his glass of bourbon and signaled the Mystic Grill bartender for another. Alaric's glass sat untouched at his empty seat.

His entire existence was a fucking joke.

He winced as he remembered what had happened with Elena on Christmas Day. She'd looked at him with her wide doe eyes and he hadn't been able to say no to her. For a fleeting moment (her mouth all over him sure as hell didn't _feel _fleeting), he'd let himself believe what she'd told him: that she was in love with him before, that she loved him now, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

He'd stopped her before she ripped open another one of his shirt. If anything, his ability to pull away from her then proved how much he loved her. (His subsequent hard-on had been a real bitch.)

Her anger at him had subsided eventually, and they'd fallen asleep on the couch watching old Christmas movies. Damon had left before she woke up, and he hadn't picked up the phone when she called him. He had felt like ripping apart everything he saw by the time he got back to the lake house. (Jeremy and Matt were off limits. He'd learned that at his own expense.)

Damon's phone vibrated in his pocket. He set it down on the bar. He had dropped Jeremy and Matt off at Matt's house five hours ago, and Elena had already called him three times. She appeared to have changed tactics and texted him instead.

_You're an ass._

His lips curled into a smirk. That, he was.

He heard a set of footsteps and a faint heartbeat approach him. Matt Donovan slipped in the barstool to him. (Not Alaric's. The boy had learned.)

"I just saw Elena," Matt started.

"Don't tell me. You're here to wave your "Team Stefan" pompoms at me and wish me a painful death so Stefan and Elena can be crowned Prom King and Queen before you all graduate from this hell hole."

Matt smiled. At least the kid had a sense of humor. "Actually, no," Matt said. "I don't like you, but I don't think your brother is any better."

"Congratulations. You might be the only person who makes any sense in this town."

"This sire bond – it's horrible. No one should get to control Elena like that," Matt continued.

Damon finished his new glass of bourbon. "Do you have any other illuminating nuggets of wisdom you'd like to share with me?"

"Elena and I, we've hung out a lot more since this summer. She talked to me about you and Stefan."

"Let me guess: it involved the words "always" and "Stefan"."

"I shouldn't be telling you this, but I think I'm the only one Elena talked to about how she really felt before she turned. And I think it matters now. I was there in the car when she called you to tell you she chose Stefan. I saw her cry when she told you she had to let you go."

"And then _you _drove her off the bridge and she died."

Matt ignored him and went on. "She said she couldn't shake you. And she said she should want to be with Stefan because he made her glad she was alive after her parents died. The thing is, I've never seen her more alive than she is now. And sire bond or not, she loves you, and she loved you before she died."

Damon swallowed. He wasn't about to tell Matt Donovan how this made him feel. He might be whipped, but he still had limits. (If Alaric were still here and he had more to drink, he would tell him all about it.) "Is there a point to all this?"

"Maybe it's not right to be with her until you figure out how to break the bond, but you shouldn't leave her all alone either."

Damon watched as Matt got up and walked away. What had just happened?

He threw a couple of twenties on the bar and headed outside. He wanted to believe Matt. Fuck, he wanted to believe Elena. And maybe they were both right: he was being ass by keeping her so far out of his life.

When Damon got to Elena's house, he walked in without knocking. He was standing outside her bedroom a second later. She looked up from her desk, and her chest let out the smallest sigh he'd ever heard.

He was so in love with her it was fucking _hopeless_.

"You're not going to throw things at me?" he asked.

"Are you going to apologize?" she replied.

"I'm tired of apologizing about trying to do the right thing."

"I'm tired of being mad at you."

He pointed at her open diary. "Is that what you were writing about?"

"I'm tired of the diary too," she admitted.

Damon shook his head. This whole situation was fucking impossible. "I'm going crazy, Elena. I'm not trying to be an ass on purpose."

She bit her lower lip. He wanted to bite it, too. (And draw her blood and make her moan and – oh _for fuck's sake_.) "What are we going to do?"

He had a vague idea of what the distant future looked like. They would find Silas and the cure. If the cure didn't turn out to be a complete joke (and if Silas didn't rise from the dead to obliterate them all), Elena would become human again and run straight back into Stefan's arms.

But right now? He had no fucking clue.

(He wanted to speed her over to the bed and make her forget her own name-)

She closed the distance between them. "Can I ask you something?" she whispered.

Damon knew this could only mean one thing: trouble. "Sure."

"When I was human – did you ever, um, pick up, on how much I wanted you? With your vampire senses?"

Damon's eyes nearly rolled into his skull. "Elena."

"Answer me."

"You have no idea what you're doing."

"Answer me," she demanded.

It was the damn doe eyes again."Yes."

(Fuck.)

"Was it the same as now?"

He swallowed. He was already hard. He almost chocked on the words. "So what if it was?"

"I couldn't think straight when you were this close to me before. I still can't now."

She pushed her body closer to his.

(Fuck, fuck, _fuck.)_

This was hell. He was sure of it.

"Elena," he groaned.

"Tell me not to do this," she dared him, her voice barely above a whisper. "Tell me to stop."

She ran her hand over his chest and looked up at him. Damon edged closer and closer to the point of no return. "Stop," he begged her.

He only understood what he had done after he'd said the words.

Damn Petrova fire.

Elena had manipulated him into telling her to stop so she would find a way around his command. Of course it had worked, because he was totally whipped and hopeless when it came to Elena Gilbert.

She backed away from him. Her eyes hazed over like she couldn't really see him and this thing between them was just an illusion. (It had to be.)

He wanted to take back his words, but he also wanted to give her the chance to find whatever freedom she was desperately clinging to. There was a chance that freedom wasn't real anyways, but he would give her what she asked for… for now.

At least, the waiting helped with the painfully erect member between his legs.

Eventually, Elena reached out to his face. Her fingers trailed down to his neck, his chest, and eventually his back. She looked up at him. "I can't," she croaked, "stop."

It only took her a second to send them crashing on her bed, Damon's back to the mattress, her legs straddling him, her mouth attacking his.

Damon flipped Elena around, trapping her between him and the bed. He tried to keep her at a safe distance. (It wasn't possible.)

"That wasn't nice," he panted.

"It worked," she declared, all smiles and wide-eyed. "I found a way around it."

"Can we talk about this when you're not—"

Damon stopped mid-word at the sound of glass breaking. He felt a sharp pain rip through his back.

He was pretty sure someone had just shot an arrow at his back.

Elena immediately moved out from under him and kneeled beside him on the bed. "Damon!"

"Pull it out," he told her.

She reached for the arrow and yanked it out. "What's going on?"

"We need to get out of this bedr—"

Damon turned around to face Elena, just in time to see another arrow hit her. She collapsed on the floor. "Elena!"

He bent down to her. The arrow had just missed her heart. He grabbed her, sped them both to her bathroom, and closed the door behind them. "I'm gonna pull it out," he told her. "Just breathe."

She nodded through gritted teeth. He pulled the arrow out as fast as he could. The sound she made when it passed through her again made him _murderous_.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded. "What the hell is going on? Do you think my brother's doing this?"

"If he is, he was doing an amazing job at pretending he had it all under control this morning."

"Damon, you have to promise—"

"I know. I'll do whatever I can not to hurt him." He had fucked up once with Jeremy and he wasn't about to let it happen again, no matter how angry he was. (Angry enough to snap his neck again.)

Damon heard someone open the front door downstairs. "I think he's just got in."

"We should split up. Make it harder for him to get us both."

"No—"

"I'm not asking you, Damon. And you better not use the sire bond to change my mind."

He almost laughed at her. She was so fucking beautiful. "Be smart, okay?"

She nodded and headed for her brother's bedroom. Damon headed for Elena's. He heard Jeremy's heartbeat in the hallway. "Jeremy, I promise I won't snap your neck again if you don't hurt your sister."

Damon moved to Elena's doorway, and found himself staring at a stranger's face instead of Jeremy's. Whoever this guy was, he was clearly in no mood to joke around.

Damon was so, totally fucked.

Damon saw Elena appear at her brother's door in the corner of his eye. He stepped forward to keep the hunter focused on him. He ducked another arrow and ran straight into the hunter, tackling him to the ground before Elena got close.

"My name is Vaughn," the hunter told him. "I heard this town had a vampire problem. I'm here to fix it."

This Vaughn guy smiled at Damon before propelling both of them to the closest wall. Damon struggled to keep the hunter's arm from plunging a stake through his heart.

Elena approached them from behind. She vamped out and bit into Vaughn's neck.

The hunter groaned in pain, and Damon did his best to keep him still. He felt his body go limp between him and Elena.

When Elena stepped back, her eyes were hungry for more, her mouth soaked in blood.

Damon loosened his grip on Vaughn to let his body to collapse on the floor, and then everything happened in a second: Vaughn roared back to life, turned around, and sent him and Elena crashing into the staircase and falling down to the ground floor.

Damon was moving in a second: he broke off a piece of the shattered railing and hurled himself downstairs.

He landed just as Vaughn raised his stake over Elena, aiming directly for her heart.

Damon didn't stop to think about the fact that killing Vaughn was a very bad idea for a lot of reasons. The hunter was about to kill Elena, and he knew the choice he had to make.

He would make it over and over again in a heartbeat.

He raised his stake and plunged it straight into the hunter's heart. Vaughn staggered backwards at first, then collapsed on the floor, dead.

Elena got up on her feet and reached for Damon. "What did you do?" she asked him, like the question could somehow change what had just happened.

He knew Elena didn't mean "_why did you kill him?" _but "_why did you send yourself to a certain death for me?"_

The answer was the same.

* * *

The curse took effect faster than Damon expected.

Damon's car was still parked at the grill, so Elena had insisted on driving him home. He hadn't fought her much.

Stefan had given them his best disapproving look when Elena and him had walked in the boarding house together. Damon was pretty sure Stefan had been about to launch into one of his sanctimonious rants when Elena explained him what happened with the hunter.

Stefan had bordered awfully close to blaming Damon for failing to keep Vaughn alive for the cure, and Elena had cut him off there and then.

"Don't you dare," she'd told him with all the fire and fury Stefan was so rarely privy to.

Stefan had backed off then. He had immediately left to find Professor Shadypants and figure out if he had a way to find the next hunter and activate him.

Damon and Elena had been in his bedroom since. He didn't like this house arrest one bit. "I'm pretty sure being in this bedroom with you wearing clothes is part of this hunter's curse."

She sat on the edge of his bed, where he was already sprawled. "You wish."

He propped himself up on his elbows, now on eye level with her. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but… when I found you at the bridge that night, who were you talking to?"

Elena hugged her legs to her chest. "My mom." She looked down. "The curse – it's your worst fears come to life," she continued. "But even though my mom was telling me terrible things, I was still glad to see her, you know? I think maybe that was the worst part. That a part of me would take the hallucinations again just to see her one more time."

He reached over and placed his hand over hers. "Way to make me want to fight this curse, Elena." She gave him a small smile. He knew there was nothing he could say that would ever soften the pain of losing her mother. Sarcasm was the best he could do.

"How was she?" she asked him. "Your mom?"

It took Damon a moment to figure out how to reply. No one had ever asked him that question in almost 200 years. Hell, even Stefan, who was a baby when she'd died, had never asked about her.

"She was… very sensitive. The kindest soul you'll ever meet. She even made my dad soft, and that was something. She always made you feel better. But she was also… weak, I think. She didn't know how to live in this world. It was hard for her to understand why people would be anything but kind and understanding."

"I think she would love you just the way you are," Elena told him.

"She's only saying that because she's sired to you."

Damon blinked his eyes at the hunter, who was now standing in Elena's place. Damon rolled his eyes. "Oh great."

Elena was back on the bed the next second. "Damon?"

"The Grim Hunter has come to pay me a visit."

Vaughn laughed at Damon. "I'm just getting started. You think you made peace with yourself when you almost died from the werewolf bite? Think again. You know what you are deep down, and I'm just here to show you that until you can't stand it anymore."

Damon sped off the bed. His subconscious really was a bitch. He smirked. "Boo hoo. If you think I can't fight my inner demons, you are seriously overestimating this curse business."

"Maybe. But I'm not overestimating how much you want Elena to be free."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh you know_ exactly_ what it means. The sire bond can't be broken with magic. The chance of this cure being real, if you ever find it, is basically non-existent. So there's only one way for Elena to be free of you." Vaughn paused. The bastard had great dramatic timing; Damon would give him that. "Your death."

The hunter advanced on Damon. "That's why you killed me," he said. "So you would save Elena from dying, and so it would save her from _you_."

Damon moved away from Vaughn. He found himself colliding with Elena. Beautiful, real, _sired_ Elena, whose feelings weren't even hers. "Damon," she pleaded. "Talk to me."

"You weren't kidding about this curse."

"You can't listen to the voices. It doesn't matter what they're saying. They're wrong. You can get through this."

"I think I'm gonna need a drink now."

Damon sped downstairs. Elena was already standing in front of him when he got to the bottom of the stairs. When did she get so fast?

"You're not leaving this house," Elena told him.

"Relax, Elena. I said I needed a drink, not a stake."

"You're not funny."

He headed for the bourbon and poured himself a glass. "Drink?" he offered her.

"I'm okay." (No, _she wasn't_.) "How are you feeling?"

"Our new dead hunter friend seems to think I have a lot of guilt I could kill myself over. Other than that, I'm peachy. Thanks for asking."

(She wasn't okay because of_ him._)

"I won't let you hurt yourself, okay? I'll be here until we find the next hunter and put an end to this curse. It doesn't matter how long it takes."

"Didn't you tell me Klaus went through fifty years of this before the curse lifted?"

"So what? I'm a vampire now. It doesn't matter."

"This is getting awfully close to counting bricks territory."

"What?"

"Never mind."

Damon raised his glass to his lips. It was already empty. He reached for the bottle again. He looked up. Stefan stood in front of him.

"Oh, you're back. Let me guess. No luck?"

Stefan pointed to the alcohol. "Drinking won't make any of this any better. Just like it didn't make listening to me and Elena having sex any easier when you were so madly in love with her. Just like it won't make things any easier when the sire bond breaks and she comes back to _me_. Good thing you'll be dead for that part."

It took Damon a second to figure out whether this was a hallucination or not. He wanted to believe his brother was better than this, but Stefan always made it so damn hard for Damon to like him.

"Thanks for the words of encouragement, brother."

"Don't pretend we're brothers. If we were, you wouldn't have fallen in love with Elena. You wouldn't have flirted with her and chased her while pretending to respect her love for me. You didn't. You wanted her all to yourself and you wanted me to pay for making you turn into a vampire."

Damon poured himself that drink anyways. "I didn't want to fall in love with her." He knew he was speaking to his own subconscious, but some things had to be said. Besides, the lines between reality and hallucinations were blurring fast. "I know I joked about stealing your girl, but I sure as hell didn't want history to repeat. But Elena… she saw right through me."

Stefan didn't blink. "But she can't see through anything right now. She loves you because she's sired to you. She might have had feelings for you before you died, but she never wanted to act on them. Not really. Otherwise she wouldn't have picked _me_. It doesn't matter how real she thinks her feelings for you are now. They aren't, and you know it."

(He did.)

Damon sat on the couch. His brother followed suit. "She'll get over you, you know. She'll realize everything she did was because of the sire bond - telling you she chose you, having sex with you, being happy – and it'll all become a really bad memory. You'll be doing her a favor by being dead. You'll be the last person she wants to think about."

Damon clutched the glass in his hand. This was everything he'd been too afraid to say out loud. "Don't worry, Stefan. I'm not expecting you to tell Elena nice things about me."

"Everyone else will be glad you're gone too. Anyone who ever cared about you is already dead. Our mother. Rose. Andie. Alaric. No one will miss you. Not Elena. And certainly not me."

Damon closed his eyes. It didn't matter anymore whether the hallucinations were a result of the curse or not. Everything his brother was saying was the truth. Everyone in town would be better off without him.

_Elena_ would be better off without him. His death would free her.

There was nothing he wanted more.

He rose from the couch and ambled around the room. He wanted to live – _he did_. But what kind of life did this curse condemn him to? And most importantly, what kind of life did it condemn _Elena _to? Decades of standing by him as he fought for every breath, when the sire bond was the only reason she stayed by his side to begin with?

He didn't want this for her. And maybe that was selfish – maybe that was him making a decision for her without letting her having a say in it. But maybe this was also the one time it was right for him to choose for her.

"It is the right thing to do, Damon."

Damon froze at the sound of the soft-spoken, raspy voice he hadn't heard in one hundred and sixty-six years.

"Mother."

His faded memories of her hadn't done her justice. She was beautiful. Her long, curly hair framed her face of porcelain skin and midnight blue eyes.

"My dearest boy. You've grown so much."

She approached Damon. He couldn't move. He could hardly breathe. "I didn't think I would ever see you again," he told her.

"It was important for me to come. There are things I must tell you."

Damon remembered what Elena had told him about her own mother. He felt it with such clarity now; how he never wanted this moment to end so he could have his mother back.

"I know you are better than this," she told him, eyes bright with the love he remembered her bestowing on him every day of her short life. "You are not a monster inside. When I read you stories at bedtime, you always wanted to be the hero, not the villain. You know what the right thing to do is."

"I love her," Damon said. Telling his mother about Elena made his feelings almost unbearable, like they were going to burst out of his chest any second. "I don't know what to do. I promised I wouldn't leave her."

"But you cannot love her like this. Not when the love she is giving you is not real. You do not just want to be with her. You want her to want you. You want it to be real. And it will never be."

He let her words sink in. "I'm not sure I'm ready."

"You have to be. Be the hero in the story, Damon. Be the man Elena wants you to be." She paused and smiled at him. It hurt Damon to look at her. "Be the son I loved with all my heart."

Damon blinked and turned around. Elena stood in front of him. "Damon," she pleaded him. "You have to fight this."

He tried to smile. He suspected his face contorted into a grimace instead. "I love you, Elena. I want you to have the life you want, as a vampire or a human. I want you to live. Not wander alone like I did for 170 years. _Really_ live."

"I will," she replied in a heartbeat. "With you."

He saw her eyes cloud with tears. She grabbed his hand in hers.

This was going to fucking_ hurt_.

"I want you to leave, Elena." She opened her mouth. He placed a finger on her lips and continued despite her protests. "I want you to leave this house and not come back until I'm gone. And I don't want you to try and fight this, okay? We both know how this ends. I don't want you to be around for it."

He wasn't sure how long his command would last. She could fight it after all. He just needed her to stay away long enough for him to do what needed to be done.

"I love you," she sobbed. "Don't do this to me. You can't just die." Her voice broke on the last word.

He pulled her to him and kissed her, hard. He could barely look at her when he pulled away. "Go," be begged her. "Now. Don't fight it."

He watched her walk to the door. Her eyes never left him. He was pretty sure he was going to hell for putting her through so much pain, whether or not the sire bond was responsible for most of it.

The door shut closed. Damon walked over to the window and pulled the curtains open. He didn't have time for the nice whiskey this time around. He reached for his daylight right and let it fall to the ground.

The sun burned his skin right away. It ripped apart every cell in his body.

He heard a commotion outside. It sounded like Stefan's car pulling in the driveway and Elena rushing to him. So she'd fought his order enough to stay outside the house. He thought about how much he wanted her to remain where she was, hoping it would keep her there until there was nothing she could do to save him.

Damon felt himself disintegrating a little more with every passing second. It wouldn't be long before he was reduced to ashes.

His chest caught on fire. He stopped trying to breathe.

He watched as Stefan burst inside the boarding house.

His whole body went up in flames.

Stefan rushed to him, looking more broken and desperate than he'd ever seen him. But he was too late. Damon knew it, and so did Stefan.

The last thing Damon saw was Elena rushing into the house. She'd found a way around his command. But she was too late, too.

Her hair flew around her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She screamed his name like it was the only sound she'd ever spoken. He remembered the way she'd smiled at him when they'd woken up together - happy, light, at peace. That was the Elena he was taking with him.

And then he was gone.


	3. Part 3: Elena

**Author's note:** This last installment is more about emotions than plot, so please forgive me if it feels like a lot of blanks need to be filled in by the time you're done reading. If I had addressed them all, this fic would have gone on forever.

Thank you guys for going on this ride with me. I hope this eases your D/E sire bond anxiety even a little. We shall survive. And if we don't... well, I'll probably write more fics to feel better about it.

PART 3

Elena

"_But it doesn't work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.__"_

Damon Salvatore was dead.

Elena's hands shook as she threw his ashes over Wickery Bridge.

The grey speckles dissolved into the deadly body of water below her. She drowned all over again along with them.

She let the urn slip from her hands. It dropped to the ground and shattered to pieces.

Stefan, Jeremy, Bonnie, Matt, Caroline and Tyler all watched as she stepped back from the ledge and walked away from the bridge.

Not one of them had dared to touch her since Damon had gone up in flames at the boarding house.

Elena broke into a run as the images filled her head again, raw, terrible and real.

She could never run fast enough.

Just one day ago, she'd been so concerned about how the sire bond affected her actions and made everyone question her feelings for Damon.

She would take it all back in a heartbeat now.

She hadn't spoken a word since she had last yelled his name like it could somehow keep the sun from reducing him to ashes, but they had all understood the truth Elena had known long before everyone had doubted it: her feelings for Damon were real.

From hate to love, from love to lust, from lust to truth.

Damon had died to give her that truth.

She wanted to hate him for being so monumentally stupid, but she knew what he had done wasn't an act of cowardice.

He'd died to set her free.

The problem was, her freedom didn't matter anymore.

* * *

Elena wandered around Mystic Falls for hours.

Her phone wouldn't stop buzzing in her pocket. She crushed it with the heel of her boot some time after the tenth call.

When she made it back home, Bonnie and Caroline were huddled on her front porch with pillows and junk food.

In a different lifetime, this would be just what Elena needed.

It wasn't now.

She let them stay anyway.

The three of them sat on the couch and watched three chick flicks in a row. Elena fantasized about throwing her TV out the window and watching it crash on her front lawn. She forced herself to sit politely between Bonnie and Caroline so they wouldn't worry about her too much.

When the girls went home the next morning, Elena was one make-up recommendation away from screaming until it left her throat raw.

Bonnie pulled her in for a hug first. "Call me anytime, okay?"

Elena nodded into the hug. Bonnie had pulled her through the aftermath of her parents' death with such grace and warmth. Elena couldn't remember one nice thing she'd done for Bonnie after her Grams passed away.

Caroline approached Elena while Bonnie pulled up her car.

"I should have been a better friend to you," she told Elena, meeting her eyes in a flash of pain and regret. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize—" She trailed. "I'm here, if you need anything. I'll just sit and listen to you, or if you don't want to do the talking I can bore you with gossip, or we can do anything you want. But I'm here."

Elena brought her arms around Caroline. This was all she could give her right now.

* * *

A week later, Elena went looking for her brother.

She had wanted silence at first. Now she wanted the world to scream with the same agony she felt inside.

Jeremy was training in Matt's small backyard. He took one look at her and understood why she'd come. He turned to Matt. "Go inside."

The second Matt stepped inside his house, Elena pounded on her brother like they weren't related and she was ready to rip out his throat.

So what if this was a bad, _bad_ idea?

She didn't care.

She fought Jeremy for hours on end. They always stopped short of hurting each other seriously, but they still gave each other lasting injuries.

She craved the pain.

There was never enough of it.

Jeremy and her both collapsed on the ground at sundown. Matt brought them water bottles before heading to work.

Jeremy broke the silence once they'd regained their respective abilities to breathe. "It's okay to grieve him," he told her. "After Anna died, I felt guilty for missing her. Like I couldn't miss her this much if mom and dad were dead too. But it's okay. Our parents weren't – they're weren't our future."

Elena looked at her brother as he fell silent again. He looked so old. Where was the 16-year-old boy she'd held in her arms at their parents' funeral?

She got up and extended her hand to Jeremy. He took it.

"I'll always be here, no matter what," he told her before she left.

It didn't matter that her brother's entire life mission was to kill vampires, and she happened to be one. This was the only thing Elena didn't doubt.

* * *

Another week later, Elena walked up to Stefan, who was drinking by himself at the Mystic Grill.

His brother's seat was empty next to him. So was Alaric's. Both had a full glass of bourbon in front of them.

Elena slipped in the next barstool and ordered a drink.

Stefan and her had been through a lot of difficult times together. But nothing compared to the blank expression she saw on his face when he turned to her.

She grabbed Stefan's hand in hers. He squeezed back, almost crushing her bones.

It felt good.

"I wish," Stefan began, "that I'd tried to understand him more. I wanted him to be someone he wasn't. But you saw that. You knew him." He looked at her, his eyes pleading for a relief she couldn't bring him. "I'm sorry. I was horrible to you, and to Damon, and I had no right to act like your feelings for each other had anything to do with me."

Stefan's face blurred in front of her and Elena bit down on her lip. The tears flowed anyways.

"One day, I'd like you to tell me about him. If you want."

She nodded. Sobs would rack her body if she so much as moved her lips.

Everything was too little, too late.

* * *

Graduation edged closer and closer every day, but Elena couldn't get herself to care about the future.

All she wanted was bourbon and blood and stormy blue eyes.

She grabbed the whiskey bottle and lied down on the hardwood floor of her living room. She liked the way her body felt against the hard, flat surface.

She hardly slept anymore. Some days she would walk in her bedroom and a memory would flash before her eyes: Damon telling her about Stefan's blood issues, Damon bringing her necklace back, Damon falling asleep next to her.

It was always Damon.

She tried to hate him. She thought about all the horrible things he'd done to her. There were so many they should have been enough. But she couldn't hate him then, and she sure as hell couldn't hate him now, when it would bring her such relief.

On the worst nights, she tried to convince herself the sire bond had manufactured her feelings for him. She walked herself through every decision she'd made since she'd turned and questioned it.

_You're a vampire, Elena. Be a vampire. Vampires eat people. It's part of the natural food pyramid. Trust me. You're gonna be miserable. _

Did she want to be able to drink the animal blood? _Yes_. Did she also want to drink from the vein? _Oh yes._ Did Damon's command make her miserable? _More than she cared to remember_. Did it force her to come to terms with being a vampire instead of pretending she wasn't a predator who fed on humans to survive? _Yes_. Did it help convince her she wasn't doomed to become a ripper like Stefan? _Yes._

_Blood sharing is kind of… personal. _

_What do you mean it's personal? _

_Just drink. _

Did she drink from him because he'd told her to? _Yes_. Was she so starved she would have drunk from him without the sire bond? _Probably. _Did this count as cheating on Stefan? _Probably._ Did it feel good in a way that was entirely separate from her feelings for Stefan? _Yes._

_I need to get in there. _

_No, Elena, this guy is dangerous!_

_So am I, Damon!_

_Then you need to be smart. He doesn't know you're a vampire. You get as close as you can, you kill him_.

Had she gone after Connor in the tunnels intending to kill him? _No_. Would she have stopped herself from killing Connor if Damon hadn't ordered her to? _She wasn't sure_. The thing about using the sire bond as an excuse for everything she'd done was that it severely underestimated who she was as a vampire. When Connor had stabbed her, she had wanted to kill him with every cell in her undead body. The sire bond had merely quieted her feeble attempt at stopping herself.

_Maybe we shouldn't—_

_No, Elena, this is our time. It's never been right before, but it is right now. Just one day? _

_Okay, one day._

Were they "sneaking around" behind Stefan's back? _No._ Did she feel bad about it anyway? _Yes_. Would she have denied Damon's request if it weren't for the sire bond? _No_. Did the smile on his face make her heart swell in her chest? Yes.

_I was ready to fight you on this, but suddenly every part of my body is telling me that I need to get in this car and leave you._

_So do it._

Did she want to stay with him? _Yes_. Did she have a choice in the matter? _No._ That was the moment she knew the sire bond was real – because he was making her do something completely against her will.

_I want you to leave this house and not come back until I'm gone. And I don't want you to try and fight this, okay? We both know how this ends. I don't want you to be around for it._

She'd worked around his command only to watch him die before her eyes.

What did she have left now?

Elena let herself think about the cure as she stared at the ceiling.

Did she want to be human again?

_Yes._

Did she feel like she had lived through too much to be human again?

_Maybe._

Being a vampire had opened her eyes to a lot of things. It had made her more… her. Less afraid. Less defeatist. Bolder. Braver.

Elena shook her head at herself. It wasn't like this cure was real anyways. Professor Shane claimed to be intrigued by the legend of Silas, but he was clearly consumed by his grief for his wife and child. His interest in a cure for vampirism made little sense. The same could be said of Silas – his love for a woman was the reason he was lying in the ground God knows where.

They were all grieving, clawing for a way to live without their loved ones.

The words swirled around Elena's head.

She stood up.

* * *

Elena ripped Professor Creepy's door off its hinges at three in the morning.

She found his bedroom in a matter of seconds. She lunged at the shape on the bed, grabbed Shane from under the covers, and tackled him to the nearest wall.

"The cure," she almost yelled at him. "Can it bring people back from the dead?"

Shane stared at her in utter confusion. "What are you talking about? It's a cure for vampirism, not death."

Elena sank her fangs into his neck, ripping his skin and gulping down his blood furiously. She pulled back. "Tell me the truth," she demanded, "or I'll compel it out of you."

Shane's body shook under her grip.

Elena didn't remember when exactly she'd stopped pretending she was pure and good. Sure, even as a vampire, she wasn't a heartless killing machine. But it wasn't about that. Somewhere along the way, she had accepted collateral damage if it meant protecting the ones she loved. It wasn't about right and wrong anymore. It was about the people who mattered most to her, and the lengths she would go to in order to keep them alive.

She would stop at nothing for the cure if her suspicions were right.

* * *

Elena found Jeremy first.

She explained what his tattoo led to, and why she wanted to find it.

He agreed to help before she'd even asked.

* * *

She told Stefan there was hope.

Everything about him changed right away.

There was nothing he wouldn't do to get his brother back.

* * *

She asked Bonnie for her help.

Elena didn't deserve it, but Bonnie promised it in a heartbeat.

Bonnie said she wanted her to be happy again.

* * *

Elena told herself last.

She walked to Wickery Bridge and stared into the murky water.

For the first time since his death, she let herself feel how much she loved Damon, and how much his absence hurt.

She'd been walking around it for weeks, afraid to fall into her grief and never climb back out.

It became her fuel now.

She was getting Damon back.

Nothing could stop her.

* * *

Caroline and Bonnie kept Elena sane while Jeremy was off killing vampires with Stefan.

They were so fucked up – all of them.

Her brother was off killing vampires with her ex-boyfriend so she could bring her boyfriend, who happened to be his brother, back to life.

She wasn't the princess. She was the dragon.

Somehow, they made it work.

Stefan checked in with her every day. In the midst of their frenzy to bring his brother back from the dead, the two of them had become friends. Elena was getting to know him in a completely different light from the one she was previously blinded by.

Stefan wasn't the nice vampire, the moral hero, or the good brother.

He was a lonely boy who ripped throats to feel alive. He was an attention-starved little brother who couldn't remember his own mother. He was a man who attached his humanity to his girlfriend so it would be impossible to lose.

But he was also brave, protective, kind, patient, and even funny.

She liked this Stefan.

She so desperately wanted him to find happiness.

* * *

Graduation was one week away when Jeremy completed his mark.

After weeks of waiting and pacing, Elena found herself with her knees sinking in the wet ground, her hand bleeding into a grave and Bonnie chanting magic by her side.

She knew the risk. She had fought Jeremy and Stefan about it every day since Shane had confessed what the "cure" really was: it brought people back from the dead.

Of course, it wasn't that simple. The ritual required an exchange of energy: life in exchange for life.

Bonnie would call for Damon. Elena's blood would activate the exchange. Life would drift out of her in exchange for Damon's return to the living.

(She'd died so many times by now, it didn't even phase her.)

If everything went according to plan, the life attached to Elena's vampirism would serve as a trade for Damon's, and she would walk away human. But there was no guarantee it would work.

Stefan had insisted he should be the one to do it. Damon was his brother, he'd told Elena, desperate to bring him back to life. But Damon had died to set Elena free. If someone was going to risk their life for him, it would be her.

His life for her truth.

Her eternity for his life.

Bonnie's chants grew louder.

Elena tried to breathe, but her lungs were on fire.

She thought of Damon.

_I want you to live._

_This is our time._

_I'm happy._

_You're gonna be fine._

_I would have saved you._

_What if there was no bump?_

_When people see good, they expect good._

_I'm mad at you because I love you._

_No one's gonna hurt you._

_I will never leave you again._

_I want you to remember the things you felt when he was gone._

_But I love you._

_I can't lose you._

_I can't be selfish with you._

_I wanted it to be real._

_You want a love that consumes you._

The last thing Elena saw before she collapsed to the ground was a pair of blue eyes.

* * *

Elena opened her eyes.

She was in one of the many bedrooms of the Salvatore boarding house. Bonnie and Caroline sat on the edge of her bed.

"How do you feel?" Caroline asked her.

Elena sat up. She breathed in and out.

She felt… normal.

"I'm human," she whispered. She almost choked on her next word. "Damon?"

Bonnie smiled.

* * *

Every cell in Elena's body shook as she walked down the hallway to Damon's bedroom.

Then she saw him, all flesh and bone, lying in his ridiculous, giant bed, and everything made sense again.

Damon sat up. His eyes drank her in. When he spoke, his voice was low and heavy. "You brought me back."

"You killed yourself to break the bond."

"I guess we're even now."

"Not even close." She closed the distance between them. "How do you feel?"

"Well, this is an improvement from burning alive, if that's what you mean." He paused. "You?"

"I'm happy."

"You're human."

"We're both human," she corrected him.

She reached for his face, desperate to feel him under her touch. She would still be this happy even if she still were a vampire. "My feelings were real, Damon. The sire bond had nothing to do with them." She paused. "So you owe me an apology."

He shook his head a little and chuckled, his mouth aghast. After everything, it was still easier for him to accept coming back from the dead than being loved.

She framed his face with her hands, like she'd done when the first night they had sex. "I love you, Damon. _You_."

He smiled at her – a full-blown, genuine smile. Elena's heart swelled. He was so beautiful.

She wasn't sure who kissed who first, but the next thing she knew, her lips were all over his. She moaned into his mouth from the sheer ecstasy of it.

Her fingers reached for the buttons on his shirt. Her hands shook so hard she couldn't undo them. Damon grabbed them in his. "I love you," he whispered, breathless and panting and happy.

* * *

Elena never wanted to leave Damon's bed.

Some time around sun down, she trailed her fingers along his face. Damon groaned as he opened his eyes. "I'm gonna need some rest before the next round or you're going to break me, Gilbert."

She laughed against his chest. "Can I ask you something?" He nodded. She went on. "What was it like? Being… dead?"

"I'm not sure. I was just… gone. Like I didn't exist. And then I was lying naked in the forest in front of Bonnie Bennet, of all people."

She rolled her eyes. "Like you care."

"I was a little disappointed you weren't awake for that."

"I'm awake now." She pressed her body against his. He groaned again.

"You are evil."

She felt his heart hammer in his chest. She pulled back a little. "Do you… do you want to turn back?"

He didn't even pause before answering. "No. I know it looked like I loved being a vampire. And I did – because I was one. But I missed being human. More than anything in the world." He trailed his fingers along her arm. "Do you?"

There was no expectation in the way he asked her. He wanted the truth from her, even if it hurt him. She loved him all the more for it.

"Before you died, I was happy as a vampire. I was okay with it. But now that you're human too? No. I want this."

Damon hooked his hand in her knee and brought her body to his. It was her turn to groan.

She was so undeniably _alive._

This was definite and infinite.

This was hers.

This was real.

- the end -


End file.
